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Taming the Revolution
Andrea Acle-Kreysing
Campus Verlag, 2022
An essential study of nineteenth-century Spanish political thought.

Jaime Balmes and Juan Donoso Cortés–the two most important conservative thinkers in nineteenth-century Spain–actively sought to preserve the centrality of church and monarchy in the wake of the rise of liberalism, while at the same time discrediting the stereotypical view of Spain as a backward and isolated country. Although they pursued a similar goal, their positions differed: while Balmes’ works anticipated a socially oriented Catholicism, Donoso presented Christianity as the supreme social good, incompatible with modern liberalism. In Taming the Revolution, Andrea Acle-Kreysing highlights the unresolved tensions in their works, escaping the dualistic interpretations of this period that defines tradition from modernity. This work endeavors to show how Spanish political thought was a compelling variation–rather than an aberration–of contemporary European debates.
 
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Thread of Blood
Colonialism, Revolution, and Gender on Mexico's Northern Frontier
Ana María Alonso
University of Arizona Press, 1995
This book is about the construction and tranformation of peasant military colonists on Mexico's northern frontier from the late 18th through the early 20th century. Though the majority of the data comes from the pueblo of Namiquipa in the state of Chihuahua, the argument has broader implications for the study of northern Mexico, frontier societies, and our understanding of the northern armies in the 1910 Revolution. The study is rare for its integration of several levels, placing an analysis of gender and ethnicity within a specific historical period.

The author demonstrates that a distinct kind of frontier serrano society was generated in Namiquipa between the mid-18th and mid-19th centuries. In exchange for keeping the Apaches at bay, colonists were provided with arms and land grants. At the same time, they developed a gendered sense of ethnic identity that equated honor with land, autonomy, and a kind of masculinity that distinguished the "civilized" colonist from the "barbarous" Indian. While this identity was itself ordered hierarchically between men and women, and between "Hispanic" and "Indian," it also provided serranos with a sense of pride and dignity that was not directly associated with wealth.

After the defeat of the Apaches, and with increased state control during the last decades of the Porfiriato, the serranos on the frontier were transformed from bulwarks of order to victims of progress. The expansion of capitalism and the manipulation of local political office by men no longer accountable to communal norms eroded the legitimacy of both powerholders and the central state. In response, serranos constructed an ideology of history based on past notions of masculine honor and autonomy. This ideology motivated their confrontations with the Mexican state during the 1890s and also served as the force behind their mobilization in the 1910 revolution.
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The Threat of Liberation
Imperialism and Revolution in Zanzibar
Amrit Wilson
Pluto Press, 2013

The Threat of Liberation returns to the tumultuous years of the Cold War, when, in a striking parallel with today, imperialist powers were seeking to institute ‘regime change’ and install pliant governments.

Using iconic photographs, declassified US and British documents, and in-depth interviews, Amrit Wilson examines the role of the Umma Party of Zanzibar and its leader, the visionary Marxist revolutionary, Abdulrahman Mohamed Babu. Drawing parallels between US paranoia about Chinese Communist influence in the 1960s with contemporary fears about Chinese influence, it looks at the new race for Africa’s resources, the creation of AFRICOM and how East African politicians have bolstered US control. The book also draws on US cables released by Wikileaks showing Zanzibar's role in the ‘War on Terror’ in Eastern Africa today.

The Threat of Liberation reflects on the history of a party which confronted imperialism and built unity across ethnic divisions, and considers the contemporary relevance of such strategies.

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To Rise in Darkness
Revolution, Repression, and Memory in El Salvador, 1920–1932
Jeffrey L. Gould, Aldo A. Lauria-Santiago
Duke University Press, 2008
To Rise in Darkness offers a new perspective on a defining moment in modern Central American history. In January 1932 thousands of indigenous and ladino (non-Indian) rural laborers, provoked by electoral fraud and the repression of strikes, rose up and took control of several municipalities in central and western El Salvador. Within days the military and civilian militias retook the towns and executed thousands of people, most of whom were indigenous. This event, known as la Matanza (the massacre), has received relatively little scholarly attention. In To Rise in Darkness, Jeffrey L. Gould and Aldo A. Lauria-Santiago investigate memories of the massacre and its long-term cultural and political consequences.

Gould conducted more than two hundred interviews with survivors of la Matanza and their descendants. He and Lauria-Santiago combine individual accounts with documentary sources from archives in El Salvador, Guatemala, Washington, London, and Moscow. They describe the political, economic, and cultural landscape of El Salvador during the 1920s and early 1930s, and offer a detailed narrative of the uprising and massacre. The authors challenge the prevailing idea that the Communist organizers of the uprising and the rural Indians who participated in it were two distinct groups. Gould and Lauria-Santiago demonstrate that many Communist militants were themselves rural Indians, some of whom had been union activists on the coffee plantations for several years prior to the rebellion. Moreover, by meticulously documenting local variations in class relations, ethnic identity, and political commitment, the authors show that those groups considered “Indian” in western El Salvador were far from homogeneous. The united revolutionary movement of January 1932 emerged out of significant cultural difference and conflict.

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Tocqueville Unveiled
The Historian and His Sources for The Old Regime and the Revolution
Robert T. Gannett Jr.
University of Chicago Press, 2003
With The Old Regime and the Revolution, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote what remains the essential history of the French Revolution. Yet historians have found it nearly impossible to trace the evolution of Tocqueville's ideas because he chose not to disclose his sources.

Drawing on his unprecedented access to Tocqueville's papers—access made possible by the late French historian Francois Furet—Robert T. Gannett Jr. reveals the ingenuity of Tocqueville's analyses of issues such as landownership, administrative centralization, and public opinion in prerevolutionary France. He also sheds light on the benefits Tocqueville reaped from unexpected intellectual encounters with such authors as Burke, Constant, and Dareste de la Chavanne. A literary detective at work, Gannett tracks Tocqueville as the author himself tracked the French Revolution—and brings him to life as a meticulous historian and an ardent defender of liberty.

An ideal companion to The Old Regime and the Revolution, Volumes 1 and 2, both published by the University of Chicago Press, Tocqueville Unveiled will be a valuable resource for revolutionary historians and Tocqueville enthusiasts alike.
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The Transformation of Palestinian Politics
From Revolution to State-Building
Barry Rubin
Harvard University Press, 1999

This book is a comprehensive overview and analysis of the Palestinians’ travail as they move from revolutionary movement to state. Barry Rubin outlines the difficulties in the transition now underway arising from Palestinian history, society, and diplomatic agreements. He writes about the search for a national identity, the choice of an economic system, and the structure of government.

Rubin finds the political system interestingly distinctive—it appears to be a pluralist dictatorship. There are free elections, multiple parties, and some latitude in civil liberties. Yet there is a relatively unrestrained chief executive and arbitrariness in applying the law because of restraints on freedom. The new ruling elite is a complex mixture of veteran revolutionaries, heirs to large and wealthy families, professional soldiers, technocrats, and Islamic clerics. Beyond explaining how the executive and legislative branches work, Rubin factors in the role of public opinion in the peace process, the place of nongovernmental institutions, opposition movements, and the Palestinian Authority’s foreign relations—including Palestinian views and interactions with the Arab world, Israel, and the United States.

This book is drawn from documents in Arabic, Hebrew, and English, as well as interviews and direct observations. Rubin finds that, overall, the positive aspects of the Palestinian Authority outweigh the negative, and he foresees the establishment of a Palestinian state. His charting of the triumphs and difficulties of this state-in-the-making helps predict and explain future dramatic developments in the Middle East.

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The Translatability of Revolution
Guo Moruo and Twentieth-Century Chinese Culture
Pu Wang
Harvard University Press, 2018

The first comprehensive study of the lifework of Guo Moruo (1892–1978) in English, this book explores the dynamics of translation, revolution, and historical imagination in twentieth-century Chinese culture. Guo was a romantic writer who eventually became Mao Zedong’s last poetic interlocutor; a Marxist historian who evolved into the inaugural president of China’s Academy of Sciences; and a leftist politician who devoted almost three decades to translating Goethe’s Faust. His career, embedded in China’s revolutionary century, has generated more controversy than admiration. Recent scholarship has scarcely treated his oeuvre as a whole, much less touched upon his role as a translator.

Leaping between different genres of Guo’s works, and engaging many other writers’ texts, The Translatability of Revolution confronts two issues of revolutionary cultural politics: translation and historical interpretation. Part 1 focuses on the translingual making of China’s revolutionary culture, especially Guo’s translation of Faust as a “development of Zeitgeist.” Part 2 deals with Guo’s rewritings of antiquity in lyrical, dramatic, and historiographical-paleographical forms, including his vernacular translation of classical Chinese poetry. Interrogating the relationship between translation and historical imagination—within revolutionary cultural practice—this book finds a transcoding of different historical conjunctures into “now-time,” saturated with possibilities and tensions.

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